


Though this might take me a little time

by adreadfulidea



Category: Mad Men
Genre: Author's Favorite, Gen, Kink Meme
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-08
Updated: 2013-07-08
Packaged: 2017-12-18 02:33:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 951
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/874663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adreadfulidea/pseuds/adreadfulidea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One day you'll lose someone who's important to you. You'll see. It's very painful.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Though this might take me a little time

**Author's Note:**

> For the kinkmeme: "Joan mourns Lane, gen if possible. privately, of course. Sends flowers anonymously to his grave. has a spot where she goes when she's feeling really down about his death. that sort of thing. "

**One**

 

On the day it happens Joan goes straight to her bedroom when she arrives home. She doesn’t stop to say hello to Kevin or for her mother’s startled questions, wondering about her red, swollen eyes and trembling mouth.

She skins off her dress like it’s toxic, a poison clinging to her skin, and leaves it crumpled on the floor. Joan is generally very careful with her clothes, but not today. She takes a very hot bath after without any of the frills she usually uses - no bubble bath or french soaps - and emerges pink and raw.

The dress is lying on the floor like an oil slick. Joan puts on a nightgown and snatches it up. Her mother stares at her as she searches the kitchen for a garbage bag.

 “Joan - “

 “I’m taking the trash out.” Joan is harsher than she means to be, but she doesn’t have time for this.

The dress was new. She bought it because she liked the quiet elegance of it, the little kick of the metallic florals. It was for work but she thought she might be able to use it for a Christmas party as well - double duty.

She will not be able to look at it again. It’s a funeral dress, and Joan has never been able to wear one of those twice.

 

**Two**

 

Lane is buried in England. Of course Joan cannot attend.

Joan spends the day snapping at secretaries and nearly flays Meredith alive for a minor mistake. Minor by Meredith’s standards, in any case. Don takes her by the arm just after lunch and leads her outside. They stand together, without their coats, smoking silently.  

She has arranged for flowers to be sent. Discretely - no note or sympathy card included. She is certain Rebecca wouldn’t appreciate receiving flowers from her.

The flowers are roses, red ones. They are not appropriate for a memorial, and Joan knows that. But she thinks he would appreciate the joke.

 

**Three**

 

The conference room has to change. No one will say it, but everyone knows it.

They all avoid his chair as though it’s cursed. Joan understands that - she can barely stand to walk past his office most days. When she has to she keeps her eyes on the floor, avoiding the blank space where his nameplate used to be.

But she’s tiring of the long pauses during meetings, the awkward coughs when anyone bumps into his chair. Everyone is acting as if it should stay in remembrance of him, a low rent gravestone. Like a wife setting a place at the table for a husband who is never coming home again.

Joan thinks she might have known him better than anyone, and it doesn’t make sense to her. The office is already cleaned out - why keep this? Why make a memento out of something that has so little to do with anything that he was?

So she moves it out without ceremony. It’s just furniture. Nothing to get upset about.

 

**Four**

 

Her grief moves like an ocean. Sometimes the tide pulls out, leaving her safe on dry land, only to come back every bit as relentless as before. Other times it’s like a tidal wave, sudden and unstoppable as the fist of God.

On days like that she heads to a little diner that she and Lane used to go to. They weren’t exactly regulars. It wasn’t “their spot” - nothing like that. They went to the diner when the office was too busy or noisy to discuss business, yet just as often they would talk about their personal lives or just gossip contentedly, trading funny stories while sharing a pot of tea.

Joan sits in the corner booth by the window. She holds her teacup in her palms, not really thirsty, just soaking up the warmth. Oftentimes she thinks of Lane, but not always. Today she tries to make her mind go quiet and  watches life go by the window. A little girl cries because she dropped her candy bar on the ground. A man and a woman are having an arguement, quick bitten off words thrown at each other while they cross the street. A young mother is playing a game with her baby at the bus stop.

It settles her, this unassuming place where he might have been sitting across from her if things had been different.

 

**Five**

 

 It was a cleaning company that scrubbed his office down, cleaned out the desk and stripped the walls bare. They left a box - his personal effects - at reception.

Joan is the one who packs the box for shipping and addresses it to Rebecca. Or in the interest of total honesty, she packs up most of it. There is one thing she keeps.

She tucks the Mets pennant into her purse and takes it home with her. Nobody will miss it, this souvenir of Lane’s love for his adopted home. Nobody but her wants to be reminded of that.

She hangs it on Kevin’s wall. When her mother gives her a curious look she tells her that one of the boys at work got it for him, with the practiced ease of someone used to feeding a parent white lies.

The truth is that she just likes the way it looks in the nursery. It feels right, as though it is a protective talisman. Which is silly, but Joan needs to feel a little silly right now. She is so very sick of misery.

Every so often when she kisses Kevin goodnight she will raise a hand to the pennant and touch it  before turning out the light. Like a good luck charm, her own personal rabbit’s foot. Like a benediction - or a farewell.


End file.
